Pair of Pennsylvania Star Trek Fans Win Tricorder XPRIZE Competition

In 2012 the the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE global competition was launched to stimulate innovation in the field of personal healtchare. The goal was to lead to the creation of a device that could perform like a medical tricorder from Star Trek. The prize would be awarded to the team that came closest to creating a device that not only could monitor a number of vital signs but could accurately diagnose up to thirteen health conditions.

This new video released today gives an overview of the competition and highlights some of the teams that joined the competition. It also features some comments from Star Trek: Voyager’s Robert Picardo.

Eventually over 300 teams entered the competition, and the field was narrowed to just two submissions, both of which exceeded the competition requirements. And last night at an event in Hollywood, which included Rod Roddenberry and Robert Picardo, the winner of the prize was announced. Taking the first prize was Final Frontier Medical Devices, a Pennsylvania-based team led by brothers (and Star Trek fans) Dr. Basil Harris, an emergency medicine physician, and George Harris, a network engineer.

The Harris brothers took home $2.6M for their artificial intelligence-based engine, DxtER, that “learns to diagnose medical conditions by integrating learnings from clinical emergency medicine with data analysis from actual patients.” The DxtER device works with a tablet computer “integrating a group of non-invasive sensors that are designed to collect data about vital signs, body chemistry and biological functions.”